Law professor warns that Tamworth's community Facebook groups could easily find themselves in legal hot water for sharing crime pictures

Senior law lecturer Professor Julia Day on Tuesday gave the first public talk in the new TamTalks series, held at the University of New England's (UNE) Tamworth campus.

Speaking to the Leader after the crash course in social media dos and don'ts, the professor said many people assume the internet is a safe space for free speech - but it isn't beyond the long arm of the law.

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The common practice of sharing footage or photos of people committing an alleged crime to others through community Facebook pages is "really sort of going against the principles of the legal system", Professor Day said.

"You've got the community trying to be judges," she said.

"Absolutely people could get themselves into hot water for that ...

"People probably should just give that information to the police and leave it alone.

"These campaigns against people and individuals and entities just generally never end well. People have got to be very careful about what they do online."

The free public talk 'Like, Comment and Share: Exploring the Risks and Benefits of Using Social Media from a Legal Perspective' was just the first in the university's new speech series.

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Professor Day said the law struggled to keep up with social media - but laws like defamation, contempt of court and more still apply, as much as they do in old-fashioned media.

The law professor recently created one of the country's first ever courses on social media law to help aspiring new legal minds get their head around the issues.

She said the university has an obligation to bring its research to the public in an accessible way, and the public talk series is part of that mission.

"I think that we've got a social contract as a university, to people in the community to sort of share our knowledge in a way that's not alienating to the community, but in a way that can be embraced by the community," she said.

"So we can have those those discussions, not just academics, having discussions with other academics, but the community having discussions."

Regional connector for the university's smart region incubator Jessica Bradbery joined Professor Day at Tuesday's event, speaking about the relevance of social media to local businesses.

The October TamTalks speech will be about UNE's body donor program, and the occult.

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